This will be (if lucky) just something else to brag about having, that people really don’t understand, like the vinyl craze right now.Throw Tidal into the mix, which already offers a high-fidelity subscription option, and audiophiles are spoilt for choice when looking for a music streaming service with a focus on exceptional sound quality. Forget the the fact that 97% of music is mastered to eliminate practically all sense of dynamics. They play their music from their phone, inside the car or on a bluetooth speaker, that is equalized to have 10x more bass than it should. The other 300 million people simply don’t care and won’t notice. There are 50k (read: a drop of a drop in the bucket) people in the world that care and will pay the money for the upgraded formats and put the $1000s of dollars for the equipment to be able to hear the difference. Newsflash… the overwhelming vast majority DON’T CARE. I worked in the industry for over a decade, and I do not understand why executives in the music industry think that consumers want this. “HD” audio is probably one of the biggest farces in the music industry. We saw the same thing with adoption rates from SD to HD TV signal in the 2000s. Until the 5G future is here and can support HD audio by default, many consumers will shy away.
Even most unlimited plans in the United States have a soft data cap of around 22GB. Lossless audio delivery demands much more streaming bandwidth than standard definition streaming. There’s also the question of capacity and bandwidth. “So I wouldn’t say never, but we think that in terms of what consumers are looking for, it’s not something that’s really resonated.”
It’s really about user interface, algorithms, playlists, discoverability and those type of things.” “But if you go back and look at it, it’s not really something that’s been a big differentiator among the different services. “We haven’t talked much about ,” Spotify VP and head of investor relations Paul Vogel recently shared at Goldman Sachs’ Communicopia conference. Amazon stepping into those waters is significant, but it’s unclear if the move will pay off. Apple is flirting with its own AAC format with high-definition but has stopped short of a lossless commitment. Spotify has tested lossless audio in select markets in the past the past but has determined there’s no mass appeal there. Amazon Music HD might be a reason for some people to switch away from Spotify. Amazon might have an easier time with conversions though, thanks to cheaper pricing for Prime subscribers. Spotify hit 100 million paid subscriptions in that same period. Amazon Music’s latest subscriber numbers appeared to be around 32 million in April.
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